Ambitious plans for Flintshire council to bring care of looked-after children in-house by 2030
Flintshire County Council is working on an ambitious plan to bring fostering provision and residential care provision in-house within five years.
The plans are the authority’s response to Welsh Government’s policy of eliminating profit from the care of looked-after children by 2030.
But a new report says that additional funding needs to be found for the council to achieve its target in time.
According to the report from Social Services Chief Officer Craig Macleod, to bring all children in care under the full responsibility of Flintshire County Council under its ‘Care Closer to Home’ strategy, the authority needs 30 additional residential care beds, three additional respite beds and fostering provision for an extra 52 children to bring all profit-making care services in-house.
Currently there are 270 children in the care system across Flintshire. Of those who have been put into care 86% are in the independent residential care while of those in foster care 41% are with independent fostering associations.
Under the Welsh Government plans, any independent organisations that operate ‘for profit’ will no longer be able to offer care services for looked after children from 2030. Organisations that invest all surpluses back into care will remain unaffected.
Flintshire’s strategy is to invest more in family stability and support to reduce the number of children coming into the care and fostering system through early intervention.
Nevertheless, some children will still require the safety net of the care system and that is where significant investment is required.
“Having established effective systems to support children and families on the edge of care our intention is to now focus on reducing the number of children who are supported though out of county arrangements,” said Mr Macleod’s report.
“Our approach is to develop arrangements that better meet the needs of the child, secure improved outcomes are more cost effective and reduce the overall number of residential provisions that the local authority would need to develop to shift from reliance on the ‘for profit’ market.
“We have an established project through a partnership with a local company that provides specialist intensive therapeutic support to children to enable them to safely step down from high cost residential and foster placements. The focus of the project is to take a child-focused approach to transition children and young people from residential care to a family-based setting where their assessed need determines this as being appropriate and is in their best interests.”
Flintshire currently has 50 children in residential care, mostly with independent providers. It’s current in-house capacity is for just nine.
Adding new capacity, such as residential homes for small numbers of children with sleep-in staff requires funding however.
While Flintshire has set aside £2 million to develop in-house provision, it remains reliant on external funding to realise its ambitious vision.
“A revenue bid has been submitted by Welsh Government to seek funding from the Eliminating Profit and Radical Reform Grant Fund 2025/2026 -2027/2028.
“Whilst we await the outcome of the bid, if the children and young people standard spending assessment formula was applied we would expect to receive in the region of £760,000 in revenue for each of the next three years,” wrote Mr Macleod.
“A capital bid has also been prepared to the Housing with Care Fund and Integration and Rebalancing Capital Fund. In line with the funding requirements a business case has been developed and submitted to Welsh Government for consideration.
“Given our funding position our financial capacity to achieve this whole system change is limited. Additional funding is needed to deliver the eliminating profit agenda with the scale and pace necessary to comply with legislation and deliver a shared ambition to radically reform the current model to improve outcomes for children and young people.”
Councillors will review the proposals in the Joint Education, Youth and Culture and Social and Health Care Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Thursday.
By Alec Doyle – Local Democracy Reporter
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